Annoying or not, every city has its own voice. Even if you are a big fan of its songs, or you despise them, everything you hear around you functions as a part of its system – from the soothing sound of nature and man-made noises to its worst beats like traffic and honking. Sure, oftentimes, people first connect city’s sounds to stress. But, if you listen carefully, these urban tunes might prove to be less piercing than you would think. Rather, at a closer ‘look,’ you will notice that these metropolitan noises can morph into a pleasing symphony.

To celebrate the 60th Annual Grammy Awards and to honor the big return of the show to New York City, its ‘parents’, the Recording Academy, teamed up with creative agency TBWA\Chiat\Day and production company Tool of North America and found an original way to record New York’s best beats.

Following a partnership with ridesharing company Uber, and ahead of the musical event of the year, the world’s leading organization of musical professionals decided to awake local residents’ senses with beautiful music written by no other than their very own host, NYC itself. Titled “Play the City” compilation, the city’s LP was recorded using a sophisticated software that was placed inside a one-of-a-kind studio, right in the backseat of an Uber car.

Installed in one of the company’s cars, the software used to make, edit, and mix the music consists of two powerful computers, multiple cameras, and an augmented reality screen. One of the computers receives visual data of the surroundings and, based on the collected information, it is able to spot objects of street furniture and differentiate them from people or cars!

Then, all data are sent to computer no. 2, which processes the info only to generate sounds of the captured entities. To complete the session, the AR layer, placed on the car window, beautifully presents the ambient soundscape with stunning visuals, which got triggered by both pedestrians and objects of the urban landscape.

Every person who was lucky enough to move around the city using the company’s services enjoyed the big surprise of seeing music of Manhattan take shape. Each song is unique and, much to the clients’ amazement, they were created right before their eyes. It is, indeed, an adventure that some will remember forever but, just to be sure that it won’t go to oblivion, every rider who took part in writing NYC’s music received the resulting musical piece as a souvenir.

As joyous as The Big Apple‘s music may sound now, the beats that spun around the place back in the 19^th century weren’t that pleasing. The streets that helped the Academy record the beautiful songs had once witnessed some of the city’s most grim sounds: they played the music of death.

As you might not know, Manhattan has a dark history, one that, up until recently, has gone almost unnoticed. Similar to the project created by the Los Angeles-based agency, people all across NYC could learn more about the bloody past of their town using the same technology based on augmented reality. To engage people to discover their city, design and technology company Firstborn created the Gruesome Gotham app, an interactive tool that allows users to be virtual eyewitnesses to the crimes that frightened the New York City back in the 1800s.

Whilst the Gruesome app invites users to “stare death in the face,” “Play the City” asks you to dive into the magic world of urban sounds which, surprisingly, can be really delightful. And, after listening to the passengers’ reviews, we can say that the musical adventure is definitely worthy of the Grammy Awards’ red carpet: “So, it’s really cool to see people making music, and they don’t even know it,” says one of them. Or, more nicely put, “It’s like a mixtape of New York.”

Credits:

Client: Recording Academy

Agency: TBWA\Chiat\Day

Production Company: Tool of North America

Partner: Uber